… the Town notified me that there may be some disruption to our beach last week… and then a few LOSTies were good enough to let me know about it too… and it was a bit different than what the Town had said. But I was busy all week and never got down there until Friday night.
It was a disaster. It was all fenced off… new stone had been brought in and the new stone had created such a cliff that there was a 10 foot drop down to the beach. Arghhh. I’ve also had conversations with the Town about getting new ladders put in on the inside of the pier, so we can easily exit the water, now that we can’t exit on the outside of the pier with the thousands of tons of breakwater stone that had been placed there… but the ladders aren’t up yet. Arghhh.
We walked down the pier and found that there was one ladder left… but like all the ladders, it doesn’t go below water level, making it very hard to use. But this looked like my only option for the swim then next morning… jumping off the pier and climbing out on the ladder. Arghhh.
Then there was a last minute change to the Sunriser’s group… and that they would start in Coronation Park and swim to the LOST Beach, sounded like an interesting swim, but lots of car jockeying at 5:30 in the morning… which resulted in a lot of confused emails at 11:00 on Friday night. I went to bed still not knowing what was going to happen for the Sunriser’s or the LOST Swim. Arghhh, chaos and stress.
I woke up at 4:00 still thinking about it… decided not to go to the Sunriser’s swim as I had no ride to Coronation. Then I stared at the ceiling until 5:15… and decided I might as well go down anyway (and Joanne was about to kick me out of bed anyway!). I got down there to find the van full and headed to Coronation. Fortunately Alex and Jackie got there right after me and we all jumped in the zodiac and after Alex finally found enough gas at 5:30 in the morning, we zoomed over to Coronation Park.
Michele and Amanda (both doing Crossings soon!) were already about 1k into their swim… as we got there Madhu and Annaliese (both doing Crossings soon too!) started off and Lisa switched from kayak to swimming. I jumped out, got my swim stuff together. And jumped in and started trying to catch up to the rest.
And you know what happened? Everything worked out fine. Jackie and Mike kayaked, Alex was in the zodiac. I started swimming and ended up having one of my best swims this summer. Being the competitive guy I am, I now had a few rabbits out front to try and catch… caught Madhu… and Annaliese… and then Lisa… and thought I’d continue trying to catch Amanada and Michele. But I forgot how fast Lisa is. She just got back from doing the “8 Bridges Swim” and has done the 47k “Manhattan Island Marathon Swim” and if you look at the past results of the LOST Race, you’ll see how fast she is. So I put it into high gear… but I couldn’t drop her. So I pushed it harder… and we still had about 3.5k to go (of the 4.5k)… and still couldn’t drop her. So we raced… elbow to elbow… as the sun came up… I was loving it… but it was tough… 1:09 minutes later we touched the pier together! That was the longest-fastest swim this year… and one of the toughest but most fun swims too!
But I still had the LOST Swim to worry about. And people were already arriving. I got out on the crappy ladder at the end of the pier… and there were broken beer bottles all over from Midnight Madness in downtown Oakville the night before! Arghhh. However, Lisa swam around the pier to the LOST beach and got out… found a route up to the fence (that was also tipped over the night before) and the problem was solved! We all were able to carefully, if not ideally, make our way down to the Lake. And had an amazing swim!
An incredible 58 swimmers… 74F water temp… sunny, warm, not a cloud in the sky or a ripple on the water!
And that’s the long way of saying that it all worked out really well and everyone had a great swim! 🙂
As is becoming an almost regular occurance these days, we had another special guest too! Zina Deretsky, from the South End Rowing Club (http://www.south-end.org/ , one of the oldest open water swimming and rowing clubs in the world!) in San Francisco joined us for a swim… kinda cool that LOST is on the map with other swim groups around the world!… and despite the little inconvenience of the beach construction said she had a great swim and fun time chatting with all the LOSTies up at Bean There for coffee after!
And although he didn’t come quite as far, Joseph Polcz, drove the 1 1/2 hours down from Barrie… for a nice swim and a coffee… and then drove all the way back! Glad you made it out Joe! (Joseph is also planning a Lake O Crossing for next year!!!)
See you next weekend… and a reminder that we could have 2 LOSTies swimming Lake O this week… Francois Hamel (Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto) and Madhu Nagaraja (Port Dalhousie to Oakville). I’ll keep you posted!
Cheers,
Rob
PS. here is a shot of Jane doing the “Kingdom Swim” in Vermont… with her LOST cap!!!
